Short stories
The Hours and the Minutes
Hodiny a minúty
Alfonz Bednár · 1956
Synopsis
Stories about the 1944 uprising and its aftermath. Three of them are set as the uprising ebbs into the mountains and German units take revenge on civilians: suffering, fear, hatred, cruelty and betrayal take the place of heroism there, and cowardice, vengeance and denunciation drive men. In the first, in September 1944, Štefan Tesár and seven other partisans flee a town fallen into German hands, while in the village of Závodie a neighbour hides a Jewish family. Other stories move into the socialist present.
Context
Published in Bratislava in 1956, the year of Khrushchev's secret report, the book disturbs: the criticism of the time reproaches the author with biologism, Vladimír Mináč sees in it a pure biological fact, and part of the criticism regards its cruelty as a literary manner; the short story Rozostavaný dom draws severe criticism from the regime. Ivan Kusý later reads in it the programmatic antithesis of schematism, and Robert Pynsent one of the first texts of the thaw to show Communist villainy. David Short produced the English translation in 2025, with an afterword by Rajendra Chitnis.
Who it is for
Long, harsh stories about the war and its aftermath, readable in English since 2025.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the book that brings Slovak prose back to a deeper view of society and of man.